“Last year 1.2 million sausages were sent to landfill in Rhondda Cynon Taf alone, which is why it is great that the local council is now signing everybody up to proper food recycling,” the Welsh Labour MP said.

“But new figures show that this House last year wasted 45,000 meals that were just tipped in the bin.

“With 33 Trussell Trust food banks within the M25 and an estimated 70,000 children in London going to bed hungry each night, would it not be time for the leader to institute a new scheme to donate unused food from this palace to local London food banks?”

In 2005, Utah was home to 1,932 chronically homeless. By April 2015, there were only 178 — a 91 percent drop statewide.

“It’s a philosophical shift in how we go about it,” Pendleton said. “You put them in housing first … and then help them begin to deal with the issues that caused them to be homeless.”

Chronically homeless persons — those living on the streets for more than a year, or for four times in three years, and have a debilitating condition — make up 10 percent of Utah’s homeless population but take up more than 50 percent of the state’s resources for the homeless.

Malnutrition and ‘Victorian’ diseases soaring in England ‘due to food poverty and cuts’

While cases of malnutrition doubled in the four years to 2014, there has been a rise in diseases that were rife in the Victorian era such as scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough Corbis

Cases of malnutrition and other “Victorian” diseases are soaring in England, in what campaigners said was a result of cuts to social services and rising food poverty.

NHS statistics show that 7,366 people were admitted to hospital with a primary or secondary diagnosis of malnutrition between August 2014 and July this year, compared with 4,883 cases in the same period from 2010 to 2011 – a rise of more than 50 per cent in just four years.

Cases of other diseases rife in the Victorian era including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough have also increased since 2010, although cases of TB, measles, typhoid and rickets have fallen.

Chris Mould, chairman of the Trussell Trust, which runs a nationwide network of foodbanks, said they saw “tens of thousands of people who have been going hungry, missing meals and cutting back on the quality of the food they buy”.

Malnutrition cases in English hospitals almost double in five years

Admissions to hospitals have soared as poorer families struggle to afford food

The shocking impact of recession and austerity on England’s poorest people has come to light again in figures showing the number of malnutrition cases treated at NHS hospitals has nearly doubled since the economic downturn Rex

The shocking impact of recession and austerity on England’s poorest people has come to light again in figures showing the number of malnutrition cases treated at NHS hospitals has nearly doubled since the economic downturn.

Primary and secondary diagnoses of malnutrition – caused by lack of food or very poor diet – rose from 3,161 in 2008/09 to 5,499 last year, according to figures released by the health minister Norman Lamb.

While the data does not include information on the circumstances of each diagnosis, the rise coincides with a dramatic increase in the cost of living, and a spike in demand for charity food hand-outs.

The figures, broken down by region, reveal the heaviest burden of hunger is being felt in rural areas. Hospitals in Somerset saw the most cases, with 215 diagnoses, followed by Cornwall and Scilly Isles.

Scientists in Bangladesh are preparing to conduct field tests of Golden Rice, the world’s first genetically engineered, vitamin A-enriched rice, before putting into production. The crop is being touted as one answer to the problem of micronutrient deficiencies around the world, but an Indian scientist (among others) is warning that Golden Rice poses a serious threat to human health. [1]

According to the Golden Rice Project, vitamin A deficiency is prevalent among the poor whose diets are primarily composed of rice and other carbohydrate-rich foods containing too few micronutrients. The situation is especially dire in Southeast Asia and Africa. About 250 million preschool children are affected by vitamin A deficiency (VAD). The group says that providing children with vitamin A could prevent about a third of all under-5 deaths.

“Rice containing provitamin A could substantially reduce the problems described above. This can only be achieved using genetic engineering because there is no provitamin A in the rice seeds, even though it is present in the leaves. Thousands of rice varieties have been screened for this trait without success. Existing coloured rice varieties contain pigments that belong to a different chemical class.”

The site continues:

“Biofortified crops, like Golden Rice offer a long-term sustainable solution, because they do not require recurrent and complicated logistic arrangements once they have been deployed.”

Renowned Indian scientist Dr. Tusher Chakraborty has another view of this supposedly miracle crop, however. While speaking to the UNB at a workshop on Food Security and Modern Biotechnology on October 10, Dr. Chakraborty said that Golden Rice “may carry traces of retinoic acid derivatives which may cause teratogenicity – that means birth defects in general.”

The American Dream Is Becoming A Nightmare And Life As We Know It Is About To Change

By Michael Snyder, on September 24th, 2015

One of the biggest steps toward a one world government that we have ever seen is happening this week, and yet barely anyone is even talking about it. In fact, it is even being called a “new universal Agenda” for humanity. Those are not my words – those are the words that the United Nations is using. If you don’t believe this, just go look at the official document for this new UN agenda. You won’t have to read very far. The phrase “new universal Agenda” is right near the end of the preamble. Officially, the name of this ambitious new program is “the 2030 Agenda“, and it is being hyped as a way to get the whole world to work together to make life better for all of us. And a lot of the goals of this new agenda are very admirable. For example, who wouldn’t want to end global poverty? But as you look deeper into what the UN is trying to do, you find some very disturbing things.

If you didn’t like Agenda 21, then you really are not going to like the 2030 Agenda, because the 2030 Agenda takes things to an entirely new level. Agenda 21 was primarily focused on climate change and the environment, but the 2030 Agenda goes far beyond that. As I have noted previously, the 2030 Agenda addresses economics, agriculture, education, gender equality, healthcare and a whole host of other issues. It has been argued that there are very few forms of human activity that do not fall under the goals of the 2030 Agenda in one way or another.

The UN says that this new Agenda is “voluntary”, and yet virtually every single nation on the entire planet is willingly signing up for it. In the official document that all of these nations are agreeing to, there are 17 sustainable development goals and 169 very specific sustainable development targets. You can read them for yourself right here.

TRT World – World in Focus: Egypt to Flood Gaza Tunnels

POPULATION UNDER SIEGE
The Gaza Strip one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Around 1.8 million people call this coastal strip of just 360 square kilometres, home. And eight years of blockades and wars have crippled its economy. 43 percent of Gazans are unemployed, and 39 percent live in poverty. They’re still rebuilding after last year’s war with Israel and depend on international aid to survive. Much has been pledged, but Israel only allows a portion of the essentials to pass through.

TUNNELS OF LIFE
Tunnels that run beneath the Egyptian border provide a vital lifeline for many struggling families in Gaza. Smugglers often risk their lives to use the tunnels – as Egypt has restricted access to the Rafah crossing since its military deposed former president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. So far this year, the crossing’s only been open for 15 days. Egypt also begun to demolish the tunnels in Sinai – over 1,400 of them since the beginning of 2014. And now, it seeks to flush out the smugglers once and for all by flooding the tunnels.

EGYPTIAN FISH FARMS
Egypt says it wants to use its 14-kilometre border with Gaza for a different purpose – to build fish farms. And Egypt’s military has already begun to dig along border to set up 18 fisheries. But Gazans fear the project is just a ploy to reinforce the blockade. Hamas official Mushir al Masri said it was to tighten the siege on Gaza. Egypt previously cleared homes along the border to expand a buffer zone and its military regime has accused Hamas of supporting militant groups in the Sinai peninsula. But Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood now outlawed by Egypt, has denied the claims.

STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE
But because of the fisheries, prices of supplies smuggled into Gaza have skyrocketed.
Smugglers are now installing water pumps into tunnels to ease the flooding. Currently, it’s believed that only 20 tunnels are still actively being used. The mayor of Rafah, Subhi Radwan, has warned that the flooding of the tunnels could cause homes on the Gazan side of the border to collapse. He also said that filling them with sea water could contaminate Gaza’s drinking water. But for now, Gazans have little choice but to watch on from behind the borders.

‘Rafah has turned into a ghost town’

As Egypt works to create a buffer zone, the destruction of tunnels has further crippled Gaza’s already besieged economy.

Egyptian authorities have ordered residents living along the border with Gaza to evacuate their homes [Al Jazeera]

Rafah, Gaza – Ahmed al-Afifi cannot focus on studying as midterm exams approach. For the past two weeks, the constant sounds of explosions have echoed from across the border.

“We are not psychologically ready for this,” said al-Afifi, 22, a Gaza-based university student who lives in the Palestinian side of Rafah, which shares a border with Egypt’s restive Sinai peninsula. His home is about 400m from the border, and the explosions are part of an Egyptian military operation to initially create a 500m-deep buffer zone.

But on Tuesday November 18, Egyptian authorities said they were to expand the buffer zone to one km.

The army is clearing the area by using dynamite and bulldozers, a systematic campaign also aimed at destroying smuggling tunnels into Gaza. The operation followed the killing of 33 Egyptian soldiers in an attack in North Sinai in October. Egyptian authorities have ordered residents living along the country’s eastern border with Gaza to evacuate their homes, which are targeted for demolition.

On Monday November 17, Rober Turner, head of UNRAWA operations in Gaza, said that the buffer zone set up by Egyptian authorities will make things more difficult . He described the siege as ‘unjust’.

Baton Rouge’s Rich Want New Town to Keep Poor Pupils Out: Taxes

February 6, 2014 12:00 AM ET

By Margaret Newkirk

Saying they want local control, they’re trying to leave the 42,000-pupil public-education system. They envision their own district funded by property taxes from their higher-value homes, which would take money from schools in poorer parts of state-capital Baton Rouge, home of Louisiana State University. They even want their own city.

Similar efforts have surfaced in the past two years in Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee, some of them succeeding as the end of court-ordered desegregation removed legal barriers. The result may be a concentration of poverty and low achievement. A 2012 report by ACT, the Iowa-based testing organization, found only 10 percent of low-income students met college benchmarks in all subjects, less than half the average.

“It’s going to devastate us,” said Tania Nyman, 45, who has two elementary-age children in the Baton Rouge system. “They’re not only going to take the richer white kids out of the district, they are going to take their money out of it.”

U.S. educational funding varies by state, often relying heavily on local taxes. The South, once notorious for segregated schools, by 2011 had the nation’s second-narrowest funding disparity among districts, according to a study by the Federal Education Budget Project, a Washington-based research organization that is an offshoot of the nonpartisan New America Foundation.

Dropping Further

Louisiana, however, scored worst in the nation, according to the study. A December report by three LSU economics professors found that breaking up the East Baton Rouge Parish school system would depress total per-pupil spending to $8,870 from $9,635. It would rise to $11,686 in the breakaway district.

Eighty percent of the current district’s students are black, and 82 percent poor enough to qualify for free or reduced school meals. Nyman and other district boosters say a split would set a dire precedent.

“Every affluent community in the state will want to create their own little school system,” said Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers.“They are taking money away that would help the entire school system and the entire city.”

Opting Out

Backers of the split, whose website is called Local Schools for Local Children, say the district has been failing for at least a dozen years, with some schools performing so poorly that the state took them over. In the 2011-2012 school year, six of 10 students attended a school ranked failing or almost failing by the state and the drop-out rate was 20 percent, according to Baton Rouge Area Chamber, a business group.

“Baton Rouge is one of the best job markets around, and the middle class is moving out,” said Republican state Senator Mack “Bodi” White. “Those who stay have their kids in private schools.”

About 30 percent of children within district lines were in private schools in 2009, according to Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives.

If you liked the teaser, will you consider a small pledge of $1 to help make this project a reality? For more info, please visit: http://kck.st/110W8j2 | If we all join together for small amounts, big things are possible…

Many people think of hunger as an affliction that only affects underdeveloped countries or is typically the result of environmentally-induced famine. However, for one in ten Americans, hunger is an everyday reality.

Right now, over 50 million Americans — including nearly 17 million children — are struggling with hunger. We all know and are in contact with people affected by hunger, even though we might not be aware of it.

Poverty is forcing millions of Americans into a hunger crisis. Their hunger emergency is defined by food insecurity, which is the lack of access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for an active and healthy life.2 Families find themselves buying cheaper and less nutritious food, or cutting entire meals out of their diet, just to make ends meet. Increasing over time, this pattern leads to chronic malnutrition, affecting children and families in profoundly destructive ways.

Hunger plays a pivotal role in perpetuating the cycle of poverty in the U.S., weakening families and systemically impairing the country’s collective ability to reach its full potential. Hungry children are not able to play, engage, and learn like other children, and are therefore less likely to become productive adults. Compromised health can lead to both short- and long-term problems; children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable.

Both the commonplace demands of daily life and unexpected, dramatic events can easily push families below the poverty line. “Families are often forced to make the tradeoff between food and other expenses” explains Penn State University economic geographer Amy Glasmeier in her book, An Atlas of Poverty in America. “Healthcare is a particular problem. In poor, rural communities families often have no choice but to use the emergency room for routine health care. This is very expensive. Car repairs are another significant and unexpected expense. If the family car needs repair and it is the end of the month, when cash reserves are low, a family will have no choice but to reduce food intake to get the car back on the road in order to go to work.”4

The Hidden Poor

According to FeedingAmerica.org, food insecurity affects many segments of the American population, and exists in every county in the U.S., from a low of 5% in Steele Country, ND to a high of 37% in Holmes County, MS.

Children

The USDA estimates that 16.7 million children are living in food-insecure households. In 2011, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.6%), especially households with children headed by single women (36.8%) or single men (24.9%), Black, non-Hispanic households (25.1%) and Hispanic households (26.2%).

Families

Families: A frightening 14.7% of U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2011. 50.1 million people lived in food-insecure households, including children, working adults, and seniors.

Seniors

8% of seniors (one million households) were food insecure in 2011. A study that examined the health and nutritional status of seniors found that food-insecure seniors had significantly lower intakes of vital nutrients in their diets when compared to their food-secure counterparts. In addition, food-insecure seniors were more likely to report fair/poor health status and had higher nutritional risk.6

After jobs move out, hunger takes root in factory town

Cliff Lambeth, right, checks individual bags to make sure each contains a sandwich, juice, fruit and a dessert for the bag lunches He Cares distributes.

Spencer Bakalar

Mike Turner assembles sandwiches to be distributed in the next few hours. Before all of the 300 sandwiches were made, the volunteers ran out of meat, causing them to go back into the sandwiches and cut every slice in half.

By Spencer Bakalar, NBC News Contributor

It is difficult to ignore the six abandoned and crumbling factories that dot the landscape surrounding Main Street in Thomasville, N.C. Less than a half-mile away from the faded storefronts, children race in the shadows of broken window panes, past the empty lumberyards that once brought the town to life.

More than 100 years ago, Thomasville was the furniture industry hub of North Carolina. It was the type of town that created generational jobs where grandfathers, fathers and sons could each work and prosper, knowing that the opportunity for employment would be there for years to come.

“It’s all a lot of people ever knew,” said Mike Turner, founder of He Cares, an outreach ministry in Thomasville that distributes bag lunches and food boxes to the community.

In the past 15 years, however, the town of roughly 27,000 people has lost more than 5,000 manufacturing jobs. Companies like century-old Thomasville Furniture Industries, Inc., Duracell, and others downsized, relocated or closed.

Spencer Bakalar

Edward McClatchen gives bags to a family in the poorest apartment complex in Thomasville. “This is the last stop before the streets,” says Mike Turner.

From 2007-2010 alone, unemployment spiked from 5.5 to 13.5 percent. Today, with an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, Thomasville still ranks higher than the state and nationwide averages.

Mike Turner was laid off in 2005 from Thomasville Furniture, but found factory work in nearby town, much like many of his former co-workers.

“All of those guys were struggling,” said Turner. “Some of them didn’t even know how to read or write. Furniture was all they knew.”

Spencer Bakalar

Edward McClatchen, left, and Mike Turner, right, pray with Frank Hill, center. Frank lives alone, but looks forward to seeing Turner every week. “No matter when I see him, no matter what is happening to him, he is always smiling,” said Turner.

The town’s economic hardship has since translated into a hunger problem. It touches those who cannot find work, those who are sick, single-parent households, traditional households, the elderly, and children.

And despite the best efforts of Turner, and other local organizations, sparse food donations, unapproved grants, and inadequate funding have made it difficult to provide enough food for the growing number of needy families.

Changing face of hunger

Terri Nelson has seen a huge increase in the number of people coming to Thomasville’s Fairgrove Family Resource Center: from 50 people a month to more than 1,000 in the decade she has worked there.

“The face of hunger has changed,” she said. “Children are most affected because of the economy. Their parents can’t find jobs, and if they do find jobs, they work as hard as they can and never make enough.”

It’s a feeling Jennifer Beck Powell knows well. A 34-year-old single mom with four kids, Powell lives in Thomasville, where the grim employment prospects forced her to look elsewhere.

Like Turner, she found another job 10 miles away, in High Point.

Spencer Bakalar

Jennifer takes a break during her shift.

Every morning she wakes up at 4 a.m. to take her children to school so she can arrive at Swaim Furniture on time for her 6 a.m. shift.

At the end of the day, after 11 hours on her feet, she picks up her kids from daycare and goes home to help them with homework and cook. Because Powell often works through her 10-minute lunch break, dinner is the first big meal of the day.

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